Historical and Sociolinguistic Approaches to French

Abstract

Historical and Sociolinguistic Approaches to French showcases the most innovative research being done today on both the history and the sociolinguistics of the French language. It foregrounds in particular current research at the intersection of these two fields in historical sociolinguistics, a field which has seen significant recent growth. The research in the volume is all strongly data-centred, drawing on a wide range of both well-established and innovative theoretical and methodological approaches in order to open up new perspectives on the study of the French language in the twenty-first century. Particular emphasis is placed on combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, on diversifying tools, methods, and objects of inquiry, and on adopting comparative and multilingual perspectives where these shed new light on important questions relating to French. The volume therefore not only highlights the current state of the field in French linguistics but also the new directions in which the field is heading.